Financial Investigation of Public Procurement Fraud

Abstract

: Public procurement process comprises one-third of all budget spending in the Republic of Serbia. According to the Public Procurement Office report, since its establishment in 2002, the government of Serbia has been making more and more investments in this area. Public procurement represents a very important process in which goods and services are purchased by various state-owned entities and governmental units. This process opens the space for committing fraud if it is not regulated or monitored adequately. The aim of this paper is to analyze the State Audit Institution report for the year 2020, which is publicly available, to synthesize the most widely recognized irregularities in this process, which could signalize possible red flags for procurement fraud, as well as to analyze the financial consequences of those deficiencies and whether responsible individuals are adequately sanctioned for it.